Sunday, December 07, 2008

It's that time of the year again...office holiday party. I found myself at the mall with about 45 minutes to kill while my suit was tailored, so I wandered in and out of a few stores and was pleasantly surprised that one of the toy stores had a ton of cheap wax packs for sale. I was probably the only person walking out of the mall with a suit and $40 worth of junk wax (mostly), but I've got some great stuff for A Pack a Day. I even shamelessly promoted the site to the cashier who did a decent job at faking some enthusiasm. All in all I ended up with 28 assorted packs for $40. I paid $2.29 for this 1997 Upper Deck Series 1 hobby pack. Let's see if it was worth it...

#234 - Nomar Garciaparra - Boston Red Sox - Star Rookies - Bam! What a way to start off the pack. Can't ask for a better start than this as a Red Sox fan.

#36 - Wilson Alvarez - Chicago White Sox - The base cards look alright, a little too much foil for my liking. This is 1997 though, I guess even Upper Deck had to go a little overboard just to keep pace with some of the other sets being released at the time. I like the green St. Patrick's Day White Sox jersey.

#189 - Sammy Sosa - Chicago Cubs - Global Impact - I'm not a Sammy Sosa fan at all, and I could do without this Global Impact subset as well.

#234 - Nomar Garciaparra - Boston Red Sox - Star Rookies - Doubles within a pack suck but this did not bother me in the least! At least I didn't pull two Sosas.#139 - Charles Johnson - Florida Marlins - Defensive Gems - A ton of foil on this subset as well. This card isn't good for much, except illustrating that I need to clean the glass on my scanner.

#117 - Paul Wilson - New York Mets

#208 - Roger Pavlik - Texas Rangers

#197 - Vinny Castilla - Colorado Rockies - Global Impact - Yawn...

#85 - Jeff Montgomery - Kansas City Royals

#63 - Travis Fryman - Detroit Tigers - I actually don't mind the little blurb that is written about each player just above the name on the base cards. Did you know that Travis hit 2 HR against the Athletics on 4/4/96? Well thanks to Upper Deck now you do.

#41 - Lyle Mouton - Chicago White Sox

#168 - Wally Joyner - San Diego Padres

Not a bad pack I guess. I was out of card collecting a few years before 1997 so these are actually the first '97 Upper Deck cards in my collection. It was worth the $2.29 for the two Garciaparra rookies alone in my opinion. If you need an example of how much the hobby has changed, there are game used jersey cards randomly inserted into these packs. Guess what the ratio is? 1 in 2,500 packs!

Funny thing about Lyle Mouton. I remember seeing him play in college. I thought he was a can't miss prospect. I even wrote his name down at the time. I never sought out his cards because I was in college myself when he made it into the pros.

These sets go between annoying and me liking them. Too much foil vs. a good checklist. Expensive packs vs. a good checklist.